The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-07-16
FORGIVENESS.

those families that live shut up in themselves, and that always seem out of the way of everything. They know nothing about political events, not withstanding they talk about them at table. For them changes in the gov ernment are matters which take place at such distance that they can only be spoken of as historical facts-like the death of Louis XVI, or the disem- barking of Napoleon.
 Customs change, fashions succeed fashions. In such quiet families, where the old traditional manners are always kept up, these changes are never mo- ticed And if any shocking occurrence happens in the neighborhood, all the scandal dies away at the threshold of their door. At most, the father and mother may possibly some evening exchange few words on the subject, but in a whisper, because even walls have ears. And, discreetly, the father may observe:
 "You heard about that shameful af- fair in the Rivoil family?"
 And the mother answers:
 "Who could have thought it? It is simply frightfdl."
 And the children suspect nothing, and reach the age of life with ban dage over their eyes and reason, with out suspecting what the under side of existence means, without knowing that people do not think as they speak, do not talk as they act, without knowing that one must live in state of continual warfare, or, at best, of armed peace, with everybody, without ever imagining that one is always sure to be tricked if one is simple, deceived if one is sincere, maltreated if one is kind and good.
 Some go on to the moment of their death in this blindness of loyalty, honor and probity-beings so thor oughly upright that nothing can open their eyes.
 Others ultimately disabused, yet un- able to understand, are perpetually stumbling here and there in wild des- peration, and die at last in the belief that they have been the sport of ex- ceptional i'll fortune, the wretched victims of unlucky circumstances and of peculiarly evil-hearted men.
 The Sevignols married their daughter Berthe at the age of eighteen. She married young man from Paris, named Georges Baron, who was connected with the Ex- change. He was handsome fellow, talked we'll, had an exterior manner in all respects calculated to inspire con- fidence; but within himself he made fun of his fashioned parents in- law, whom he spoke of to his friends as "My dear fossils"
 He belonged to good family, and his young wife was rich. He took her to Paris to live.
 There she betame one of that pe- culiar provincial class so numerous in the metropolis. She remained totally ignorant of the great city, ignorant of it's fashionable society, its pleasures and it's ways, just as she had always remained ignorant of life, and it's per- fidies, and its mysteries.
 Always shut up in her own house. hold, she knew little of any street ex- cept her own; and if she ever ventured into another quarter, it seemed to her like long voyage to some foreign and unfamiliar city. She would say in the evening:
 "I crossed the boulevards today"
 Two or three times year her hus- band took her to the theatre. These rare amusements were great events for her, which she never forgot the inn pression of, and was always talking about.
 Sometimes three months afterward she would suddenly burst out laugh ing at table, and cry out:
 -"Don't you remember that actor in the generals uniform, who crowed like cock?"
 All her acquaintances were limited to two families distantly related to her own, and these two families rep resented all she knew of humanity. She always spoke of them as "the Martinets'' and "the Michelints."
 Her husband lived as he pleased, coming home when it suited him, sometimes at daylight, always with the prctext of having been busy; never bothering himself much, how ever, to find excuses, 30 certain did he feel that no suspicion could ever enter the candid mind of his wife.
 But one morning she received an anonymous letter.
 She remained for the moment thunderstrack, being too upright of heart to comprehend tho infamy of denunciations, to despise the missive whose writer pretended to be inspired by wish for her happiness, by the hatred of evil and by the love of truth. sa siissH ptaa
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